In the Shell of the Old

Sunday’s Readings: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

• Malachi 3: 19-20a
• Psalm 98: 5-6, 7-8, 9
• 2 Thessalonians 3: 7-12
• Luke 21: 5-19

In looking at today’s Gospel reading, as the people are admiring their Temple, and as Jesus tells them of its ultimate impending destruction, I am reminded of the 2019 fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The sudden and total destruction of a revered and holy site is a traumatic moment, representing the loss of a piece of history, culture, and religion.

So maybe it’s no surprise that the crowds in the Gospel pivot so easily from talking of the destruction of the Temple to asking about the End Times. With such a great loss, maybe it’s easier to accept the End of All Things than to think that life might go on despite such calamitous change.

It may explain why some Christians become so fixated on the End Times. In a world that is constantly changing faster than we can keep up, there can be a kind of relief in the thought of burning it all down as in the first reading from Malachi. But that kind of Apocalyptic longing amounts to a kind of cultural suicide wish. A loss of hope.

As Saint Paul reminds us in the second reading, we have too much work to do. The Kingdom of God is not a matter of sweeping away what was to replace it with something new. Rather it is, as Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin were fond of saying, a matter of building the New World in the shell of the old.

There have always been wars and insurrections, famines and plagues, and there will continue to be. And it is because of this that the poor will always be among us — hungry to feed, sick to look after, displaced people to shelter. This is the work of the Kingdom. These lives we work to save or try to preserve are those lives that will carry us in to eternal life.

As Jesus says, by persevering in this work we will secure our own lives.